Hi
I find this astonishing.
Maybe you didn't know, but the Pentagon has been spending
big bucks on a web site that rehabs the war in Vietnam, by which I mean that it
excludes mention of the massive movement against it and the atrocities
associated with its prosecution.
This should not happen, especially with a president who famously
wants not to do stupid things.
If "Vietnam Syndrome" is over and out, does that mean
we are ready to do more really stupid things, maybe quite soon?
This is quite simply awful.
NY Times 10/10/14
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/us/pentagons-web-timeline-brings-back-vietnam-and-protesters-.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSum&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Sheryl Gay
Stolberg
Paying Respects, Pentagon Revives Vietnam, and War Over
Truth
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Tom Hayden, part of a group objecting to the Pentagon's
history of the war. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times
WASHINGTON -- It has been nearly half a century since a
young antiwar protester named Tom Hayden traveled to Hanoi to investigate
President Lyndon B. Johnson's claims that the United States was not bombing civilians
in Vietnam. Mr. Hayden saw destroyed villages and came away, he says,
"pretty wounded by the pattern of deception."
Now the Pentagon -- run by a Vietnam veteran, Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel -- is planning a 50th anniversary commemoration of the
Vietnam War. The effort, which is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $15 million
by the end of this fiscal year, is intended to honor veterans and, its website
says, "provide the American public with historically accurate
materials" suitable for use in schools.
But the extensive website, which has been up for months,
largely describes a war of valor and honor that would be unrecognizable to many
of the Americans who fought in and against it.
Leading Vietnam historians complain that it focuses on dozens
of medal-winning soldiers while giving scant mention to mistakes by generals
and the years of violent protests and anguished debate at home. Photo
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Credit Leon
Neal/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images
The website's "interactive timeline" omits the
Fulbright hearings in the Senate, where in 1971 a disaffected young Vietnam
veteran named John Kerry -- now President Obama's secretary of state -- asked,
"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" In
one early iteration, the website referred to the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which
American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, as the My Lai
Incident.
The glossy view of history has now prompted more than 500
scholars, veterans and activists -- including the civil rights leader Julian Bond;
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers; Lawrence J. Korb, a
former assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan; and Peter
Yarrow of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary -- to join Mr. Hayden in demanding
the ability to correct the Pentagon's version of history and a place for the
old antiwar activists in the anniversary events.
This week, in a move that has drawn the battle lines all
over again, the group sent a petition to Lt. Gen. Claude M. Kicklighter, the retired
Vietnam veteran who is overseeing the commemoration, to ask that the effort not
be a "one-sided" look at a war that tore a generation apart.
General Kicklighter declined to be interviewed, but a Pentagon
spokesman, Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, said in an email that the mission of the
commemoration, as directed by Congress, is to "assist a grateful nation"
in thanking veterans and their families. He said that the Pentagon was willing
to make corrections "when factual errors or potential mischaracterizations
are brought to our attention," and that "there is no attempt to
whitewash the history of the Vietnam War."
The team has already changed some facts: After Nick Turse,
the author of a book on Vietnam, noted the My Lai Incident reference in a February
article on the website TomDispatch, the language was revised to read,
"American Division Kills Hundreds of Vietnamese Citizens at My Lai."
It still does not use the word massacre.
Mr. Hayden, 74, and other 1960s-era activists who helped him
gather signatures, say they do not quarrel with honoring the sacrifice of soldiers.
But they object to having the military write the story.
"All of us remember that the Pentagon got us into this
war in Vietnam with its version of the truth," Mr. Hayden said in a recent
telephone interview from Berkeley, Calif., where he attended a rally to mark another
50th anniversary, that of the free-speech movement. "If you conduct a war,
you shouldn't be in charge of narrating it."
Vietnam historians are also troubled. Fredrik Logevall, a
Cornell University professor whose book on Vietnam, "Embers of War,"
won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize, said that the website lacked context and that the timeline
"omits too many important developments, while including a significant
number of dubious importance." Edwin Moise, a Vietnam historian at Clemson
University, said he found numerous minor inaccuracies on the site.
The presidential historian Robert Dallek, meanwhile, said he
would like to see the anniversary effort include discussion of "what a torturous
experience" Vietnam was for presidents. "It's hard to believe this is
going to be an especially critical analysis of the military," he said.
Congress authorized the commemoration in 2008, when it
adopted a bill that directed the Defense Department to "coordinate,
support and facilitate" federal, state and local programs associated with
the 50th anniversary of the war. On Memorial Day 2012, President Obama issued a
proclamation establishing a 13-year program, lasting until 2025, "in recognition
of a chapter in our nation's history that must never be forgotten." That
day, he spoke at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
Few details of the plans have been made public. But in a
2012 interview with the website HistoryNet, General Kicklighter said that the
commemoration would begin on Memorial Day 2015, when "we will begin to
recruit the nation to get behind this effort in a very big way" and that
the most active phase would conclude by Veterans Day 2017.
He promised "educational materials, a Pentagon exhibit,
traveling exhibits, symposiums, oral history projects and much more." The mission,
he said, is to "help the nation take advantage of a rare opportunity to
turn back to a page in history and to right a wrong, by expressing its honor
and respect to Vietnam veterans and their families."
But in antiwar and peace advocacy circles, unease has been
percolating for some time. Veterans for Peace, an antiwar group based in St.
Louis that includes many Vietnam veterans, has been talking since Mr. Obama's
speech about an "alternative commemoration," said its executive
director, Michael McPhearson.
Mr. McPhearson was unaware of the Hayden petition. "One
of the biggest concerns for us," he said, "is that if a full
narrative is not remembered, the government will use the narrative it creates
to continue to conduct wars around the world -- as a propaganda tool."
Mr. Hayden said he was particularly incensed at timeline
entries like one that describes the Pentagon Papers as "a leaked
collection of government memos written by government officials that tell the
story of U.S. policy, even while it's being formed" -- without noting the Nixon
administration's effort to prevent their publication, or that Mr. Ellsberg and
another leaker, Anthony Russo, were tried as traitors. And while the website
does mention some protests, the references are often brief and clinical.
On Nov. 15, 1969 -- when 250,000 antiwar protesters jammed
Washington in what was then the largest mass march in the nation's capital --
the timeline entry simply states, "Protesters stage a massive protest in Washington
D.C."
Mr. Hayden's petition grew out of conference calls with
others in his antiwar network, including David Cortright, a veteran who protested
the war in uniform and is now a scholar at Notre Dame, and John McAuliff, a
former conscientious objector who runs a nonprofit organization devoted to
reconciliation between the United States and Vietnam.
The effort is also something of a reunion for the group.
After scanning the list of signatories, Mr. Ellsberg, 83, exclaimed, "God,
I'm glad they're all alive!"
Many of the longtime activists also see the petition as
deeply relevant today.
"You can't separate this effort to justify the terrible
wars of 50 years ago from the terrible wars of today," said Phyllis
Bennis, a Middle East expert who has known Mr. Hayden since the early 1970s. "When
I saw this, I thought immediately, `We've got to stop this.' "
A version of this article appears in print on October 10,
2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Paying Respects, Pentagon
Revives Vietnam, and War Over Truth.
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